Against All Enemies

by John Gilstrap

  “On your count,” he repeated.

  “In three, two, one . . .”

  A millisecond before Dylan’s trigger broke, his first target stooped down, out of the sight picture. It was a clear miss, and rather than chasing Target One with the ten-power scope, he shifted to Target Two. He sent five rounds downrange in less than a second, and the target died instantly.

  While the suppressors on their weapons muffled the report of the rifle, and all but eliminated muzzle flash, they’d burned through their subsonic loads, and the whip cracks of passing bullets told the survivors that they were under fire.

  Someone up there started shooting back.

  Dylan had never heard rifle fire sound so loud.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “Who’s shooting?” Boxers said, his head whipping around to the source.

  “Shit,” Jonathan spat. “They started the war without us. Open the goddamn door.”

  Boxers dropped to one knee and readdressed the slab of C4 explosive he’d packed against the latch assembly on the door.

  Jonathan grabbed Big Guy’s discarded ruck and took five giant steps back to leave Boxers a clear path for retreat. Big Guy pulled the pin on the seven-second fuse, plugged his ears with gloved fingers and moved back to Jonathan’s position on the corner nearest the driveway.

  GPCs were dependably loud, but this boom seemed louder because of the silence of the night and the shock wave’s reverberation through the corrugated steel wall.

  The sound was still rolling through the hills when they pushed themselves off the wall and streamed back to the shattered door. The charge had blown a nearly perfect round hole in the steel where the lock assembly used to be, and had knocked the frame askew. Boxers got to the door first, stuck his beefy hand through the still-glowing hole, and pulled. It took two enormous yanks, but it opened, squealing metal-on-metal as the surfaces separated.

  Stepping inside, Jonathan turned on the light. Why not, at this point? An industrial generator hummed in the center of the building, its exhaust pumped through ductwork out into the night. The total footprint of the machinery, including the service catwalk and appurtenances, covered an area of about twenty feet square. Someone had invested serious bucks into this thing.

  “We just need it to be effective, Big Guy,” Jonathan said. “We don’t need it to be pretty. Just kill the power.” He knew that left to his own devices, Boxers—who rightly considered himself a master of the explosive arts—could engage in overkill.

  “You might want to step back outside,” Big Guy said. He lifted a thermite grenade from its pouch on his vest, and walked toward the main buss bar panel. He pulled the pin, placed the grenade on the top of the box, let the safety spoon fly, then quick-stepped out of the way. Little more than a can filled with a mixture of fine aluminum powder and iron oxide, thermite grenades had notoriously unreliable fuses once the safeties were disengaged, and once ignited, they burned white-hot through just about any surface—including the copper conductors that lay behind the panel door.

  Jonathan stood just outside the door, scanning the night for threats. “Hey, Madman,” he said into his radio. “We’ll be ready to go in about thirty seconds.” Behind him, he heard the hiss of the thermite igniting, and he felt a blast of heat. Two seconds later, Boxers approached from his blind side and lifted him up and moved him over a couple of feet.

  “I don’t want you to get hurt,” Big Guy said. Then he pulled an M67 frag grenade from his pouch and pulled the pin. “Frag out,” he said, and he tossed the bomb inside the room. As the grenade left his hand, the thermite did its job and the camp went black. Four seconds later, the ground shook from the grenade. Responding to the disapproving look he got from Jonathan, Big Guy said, “I feel better when I can hear the boom.”

  Ian’s head snapped up at the sound of the rifle shot. Had there been a negligent discharge? He’d worried about the firearms discipline in this place ever since he’d arrived. But he thought for sure that with the extra training—

  A second gunshot. Then a rapid burst of them. Then an explosion.

  “Dammit!” His hand snatched his radio from its charger and he keyed the mike. “Gate One, Gate One, this is Carrington. Report.”

  Nothing.

  “Gate One, respond.”

  Nothing.

  The lights went out. He was bathed in blackness. The lights were out everywhere throughout the camp. “Good Christ, we’re under attack,” he said to himself. He keyed his mike again. “Communications, this is Carrington. Sound the general alarm.”

  “Communications” was the radio designation for the central command post that occupied a reinforced concrete bunker in the middle of the compound. When it was completed, it would have its own electrical supply and would serve as a kind of castle keep for moments just like these. When it was completed. As in, three or four weeks from now.

  “We don’t have electricity, Colonel,” said a young voice from the radio. “We got no general alarm to sound.”

  Goddammit.

  His heart racing, Ian tried to piece together the next steps. It had been a long, long time since he’d been in a real shooting war, and back then, he’d been the aggressor. He tried to make the pieces fall into place.

  When he realized that shooting had stopped, he also realized that his sentries were either dead or had run away. He’d tried to put the best of the best on perimeter security, but it was never possible to know what people were going to do once the shooting started.

  Whatever the facts turned out to be, the perimeter had been breached—whether by one or by a hundred, he didn’t know. But it was time to get the soldiers organized. He grabbed his vest and his M4 from its spot next to his bed and headed for the door.

  If the sentry had stayed on the ground, he probably would have survived. Instead of accepting his gift of life for what it was, however, and no doubt panicked by the sudden deaths of those surrounding him, he chose to return fire to the night, first a single shot, and then a long burst, his shots all going wild. But flying bullets were flying bullets, and given enough time and a large enough number, sooner or later the odds got bad for anyone downrange.

  Dylan was distantly aware of the sound of the GPC being shot as he settled the reticle of his gun sight on the sentry’s muzzle flashes. Before he could pull the trigger, though, Jolaine let loose with a long burst that silenced the other shooter.

  “Let’s go,” she said, and she was moving again.

  There was an odd X-factor in play, Dylan thought. It was as if she didn’t recognize him as part of the team so much as a burden to be born, a rookie to be babysat. When this was all over, he was going to have some words with her about that. For now, he followed.

  After seven or eight steps, the tree line ended, leaving them exposed to the lights that—

  Finally, darkness fell. Real darkness, too, the kind you only get out in the middle of nowhere, exposing a clear sky that looked cloudy with stars. Dylan pulled his NVGs into place and vision returned. Up ahead, beyond that second gate, commotion grew. People were waking up—literally and figuratively—to the notion that something was wrong. Gunfire, explosions, and then darkness all triggered fear, and fear triggered confusion.

  That last part—the confusion—was what he and Jolaine had been assigned to maximize.

  With the advantage of darkness now, they advanced toward the gate at a run, instinctively keeping low. Dylan kept his rifle up and ready, scanning continuously for any targets that might present themselves. Digger’s orders could not have been clearer. Anyone with a gun would die. Anyone who ran away with a gun in their hands would die, too, because retreating and surrender are entirely different things. Those who merely retreated often formed up again to reengage. By not killing them the first time, you exposed yourself and your team to the risk of death on the flip side.

  Ahead of him, Jolaine vaulted two of the dead sentries without slowing, then dropped to a knee about eighty feet farther in. He mirrored the posture next to
her. “Is there a problem?” he asked.

  “Just want to make sure I have my bearings,” She Devil replied. “Those are the barracks over there, do you concur?” Pointing with her whole hand, as if it were a karate chop, she indicated what looked like a residential arrangement of trailers downrange and to the right.

  “I concur.”

  “All right, then,” she said. “Let’s do our job.”

  Ian stepped out into the darkness of the front stoop and was dismayed to see so little activity. Shots had been fired, for God’s sake. There’d been explosions. Where was the . . . panic? “Wake up, everyone!” he yelled. He fired a long burst of 5.56 millimeter rifle bullets into the ground just beyond the stoop. “We’re under attack, goddammit!”

  He strode down the steps of his quarters and across the gap that led him to the next quarters. These officers were of lesser rank, and occupied four to a building. He pounded on the door with the butt of his rifle, then threw the door open. “Where are you?” he yelled. He stared into the darkness, where he saw movement but no faces. “I want every man in this room dressed, armed, and out of here in less than one minute. Less than ten seconds. Find your teams, organize them, and be prepared to fight.”

  “Who are we fighting?” Little asked.

  “Whoever’s fighting us back. Weapons and ammo, men. Right by God now!”

  Dylan and Jolaine advanced in lockstep on the cluster of house trailers that served as barracks for the residents of this place. Dylan had a hard time thinking of them as soldiers. Alpha’s mission was to roll a thermite grenade to the base of one of the trailers. Nothing was more disorienting to anyone—soldier or civilian—than waking up the knowledge that your world was on fire. Given the fact that trailers such as these were constructed mostly of plywood and glue, that world would ignite with startling speed.

  The plan was both simple and brutal, and in his heart, Dylan was happy that the barracks residents had had a chance to wake up. Since the first moment when they’d discussed the plan, he’d been plagued by images of people burning to death in their beds. Friend or foe, that’s a shitty way to go.

  By the time they got to the end of the street, there were visual and audible signs of movement within the darkened residences. Time was running out for the attackers to have maximum benefit of their diversion.

  “How many thermites do you have?” Jolaine asked him.

  “Four.”

  “Me, too. You take left, I’ll take right. I figure every other building will do it. Ready?”

  “Whoa, whoa,” Dylan said. “Our orders are to light one structure. We want a diversion, not a wholesale execution.”

  Even through the distortion of night vision, Dylan saw the serious set of Jolaine’s face. “We’re here to win,” she said. “The more fires we set, the bigger the diversion, the better our chances of survival.”

  Dylan didn’t know what to say. This was crazy.

  “Give that look to someone else,” Jolaine said. “Self-righteousness works better coming from someone who didn’t kill American agents from a couple hundred yards away.”

  “Hey—”

  “Suit yourself,” she said. “I have a job to do, and apparently I’m doing it alone.”

  She took off at a jog down the center of the street, her rifle slapping against her body. As she passed the first trailer on her right, she lobbed a grenade. It rolled under the steps to the main door and ignited with ferocious intensity.

  Dylan stood still, anchored in place for five, maybe ten seconds—long enough for her to lob her second grenade to the base of a trailer on the left-hand side of the road—unsure what to do. This was horrible. This was murderous.

  The sound of panic growing in the first trailer snapped him out of his fog. Even if Jolaine was a psycho, she was still a member of his team. He owed her security. With his rifle up and at the ready, he took off after her. By the time he caught up, the first trailer was well involved in fire, and people had begun spilling out into the street. Four other trailers were also on fire.

  And the screaming had started. There are no screams like those of a man on fire. He had heard it many times in his past, and every time was a new exercise in nausea. Warfare would be many times more gratifying if it weren’t for the killing it required.

  With the new source of light—the fires—he lifted his NVGs away and turned to see Jolaine’s face. He wasn’t surprised to see her smiling.

  “Scorpion, Alpha,” she said into her radio. “Diversions are active. We’re going to take out targets as they present. Advise when the primary is achieved, and we’ll join up.”

  “Scorpion copies.”

  Dylan was horrified. “Now we’re going to snipe people as they flee a burning building?” he asked.

  “Only if they’re armed,” Jolaine replied.

  “Jesus, that’s murder.”

  She hit him hard with a glare. Her NVGs up and out of the way, the intensity of her eyes was well north of frightening. “I figured this was the part you’d be best at.”

  “Did I just copy that Boomer and She Devil are going to kill people as they run out of their burning quarters?” Rollins asked over the engine noise as he barreled toward the gate at the second ring.

  “That’s what I heard,” Boxers responded. The fact that he didn’t editorialize indicated to Jonathan that Big Guy was as horrified by the thought as he was.

  But he kept his mouth shut. He couldn’t think of a single instance in his career where a discussion of the morality of an ongoing mission inured to the benefit of the ongoing mission. As they passed through the gate, he ignored the bounce as Rollins rolled the Batmobile over a sentry’s corpse. “Do you know where officers’ country is?”

  “Committed to memory,” Rollins said. “Oh, my God,” he added, pointing toward the roiling plume of flames.

  “Holy Christ,” Jonathan said. “How many fires did they start?” It was a rhetorical question, the answer to which was, too many.

  Big Guy looked uncomfortable sitting in the seat that wasn’t driving. In the backseat, as he was with Jonathan, he looked like he might explode. For all of the misery that was being inflicted, though, not a single shot had been fired since that initial volley—except for a one-off a few seconds ago that seemed to come from the top of the hill they were approaching.

  “This is feeling too easy,” Jonathan said. He was a little surprised to actually hear the words. He’d been intending to just think them.

  “I hate it when you say stuff like that,” Boxers said.

  Ian saw the fires burning down the hill, and he knew right away that it was the barracks complex. From the color of the flames and the size of the inferno, he knew that it was not a natural fire, and he sensed that it was in fact a diversionary measure. Whoever his attackers were, they knew what they were doing. These were military tactics, but was it even possible that the military would be involved? He could wrap his head around the notion that the FBI had gotten wind of what they were doing, and if that were the case, they might mount a raid that was military in scope, but they would never risk the lives of innocents by setting fires. By running the rats out of the ship.

  Yet laws existed to prevent the military from using military tactics on American soil. Truth be told, he’d counted on it, just as countless terrorist groups had counted on American laws to take them a step closer to victory.

  But if this was a military operation, where were the helicopters? Where were the drones? The drones in particular were a signature of the Darmond administration, which showed no compunction about vaporizing American citizens without benefit of due process.

  “Colonel Carrington,” a voice called from behind, from the darkness. “Where are your defenders?” It was General Karras. In the dim, deflected light of the fires, he looked like he might have showered before stepping outside his quarters.

  “They’re down the hill where you insisted they be,” Ian said.

  He heard the pops of individual gunshots in the distance.
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  “And I’m guessing they’re being killed, either en masse or one at a time.”

  “Then do something!” Karras yelled. His eyes showed something north of fear yet south of terror.

  Ian spun around, turning his back on Karras, and headed for the next building in officers’ country. “What a great idea,” he mocked under his breath. “Do something. Why didn’t I think of that?” He stepped to the next building and pounded on the outside wall with the butt of his rifle. “Wake up! Get out here! We’re under attack!”

  Behind him the door to the barracks building he’d just left opened, and four men streamed out. All were armed, but none were fully clothed. He saw underwear and boots, shirts, pants and barefoot, boots and pants and shirtless. Every permutation, it seemed, but for now, the weapons were the important part.

  “You four!” Ian shouted, pointing to them. “Fan out and form a defensive perimeter.”

  They started to move, then one stopped and turned. “How do we do that?”

  This was the nightmare. They’d planned their security around keeping people in, rather than keeping them out. The tactics to which the men had been trained were all about small unit offense. He’d offered up nothing for defensive fighting. It had always seemed too unlikely that the camp would have to be defended. Who’d attack it, after all?

  Ian walked to the young man who’d asked the question, put his left hand on his bare shoulder and pointed with his right with a wide, horizontal sweeping motion. “Out there,” he said, shouting to be heard by the others. “Form an arc around this complex of buildings. Keep ample space between you. Don’t fire until I say to fire.”

  “Who are we shooting at?”

  Damn good question. “Don’t fire until I give the command,” he said again.

  At first, it seemed that the residents of the enlisted barracks had chosen to burn to death. For the longest time—although it was probably no more than a few seconds—no one moved. Dylan and Jolaine both had time to take positions at the far end of the street. Dylan used a stout tree for cover on the left side and Jolaine had hunkered in behind a serious tree stump on the right.